Nelson's Weblog: culture / games / catacomb

Pivot low. Place throwing knife in left hand.

Thanks to Ask MetaFilter I finally reread a story that made a big impression on me twenty years ago, Catacomb by Henry Melton. It appeared in 1985 in issue 97 of Dragon Magazine and was the first time I ever read about the idea of an online multiplayer game. It describes the adventures of a young woman in a virtual world where she seeks fabulous treasure, falls victim to a thief, and ends up making a friend.

YOU HAVE BEEN RENDERED UNCONSCIOUS ON A POISONED DART.  
YOU ARE L0GGED OFF CATACOMB FOR 00:30 MINIMUM.  
YOUR ACCOUNT BALANCE IS:  
$     0.78 FOR TODAY 
$    12.40 FOR THE GAME 
$     7.50 TREASURE BONUS {RESERVED}

Some of the story details are interesting. Our hero types her commands in like an old text adventure, but the world she experiences is rich detail: sounds, images, even smells. And the story does a great job of presaging some of the nuances that later arose in online games: player vs player combat, morality in-game vs the real world, the power of social connections online, what happens to your character when you're offline. (For context: MUDs started in 1978, True Names dates from 1981).

But the most fun part of the story is the link between treasure in-game and real world money. The idea you could make a living playing the game, either as a heroic adventurer or a thief who preyed on heroic adventurers. We're not quite there with online games yet, but we're close. There's the unofficial economies in MMORPGs, mostly realized via eBay, and a few niche games like Project Entropia. I think players making money in online games will inevitably hit the mainstream.

Ah, thanks to Majcher I now know that Cory is way ahead of me with his story Anda's Game.

culture • games
2004-12-11 02:47 Z


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